


Of the Devil's Party

by guckindieluft



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, BAMF John, M/M, Romance, Science Fiction, Sherlock is a science experiment, spacey wacey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-28 11:46:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/674039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guckindieluft/pseuds/guckindieluft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being outlawed on false charges of treason, Sherlock Holmes becomes embroiled in the struggles of a small but stubborn resistance group- and their intriguing pamphleteer, who may be the only person who can help him unravel the mystery of his own exile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Farewell, happy fields

**Author's Note:**

> "Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it."  
> -William Blake, _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_

**1\. Prologue**

The cell was very dark. Sensory deprivation-- did they suppose he could _think_ his way out of the steel and security protocols? Given, he probably could, but it wouldn’t do him any good: the cell had no means of self-propulsion and the only door evacuated directly into space. 

He couldn't say how long he'd been there, but it was long enough that he was momentarily disoriented by the juddering scrape and shake of a ship docking against the capsule. Once he realised what it was he briefly entertained the possibility of making a break for it when the hatch opened--he'd never flown a ship of that class, but once he commandeered it it would be in everyone's best interest to ensure he didn't accidentally fly it into the sun-- but almost immediately dismissed the idea as impossible. Even if he could make it past the guns that would be trained on him from the moment the door slid open, it would be suicidal to gad about in government transport, and as he wasn't up for execution (was he?), there was no reason to take such extreme measures. Anyway, if the ship was Mycroft's, and it almost certainly was, he had no reason to run. 

Instead he arranged himself, as best he could in the darkness, into a more impressively pathetic heap in the corner, curled up toward the wall with his face to the sweat-streaked floor. At least he wouldn't have to fake the stench. He concentrated on slackening the muscles in his back and shoulders while the ship established a hard seal, and there was another thing he didn't need to fake: the sucking sound was the loudest thing he'd heard since he screamed himself out several--days?-- before, and so when Mycroft oozed in, flanked by a cadre of soldiers in black, Sherlock had the palm of his hands pressed up against his ears, his jaw tight with pain. 

"Treason, Sherlock? Really?" Mycroft sighed, as if Sherlock were a poorly house-trained puppy. Sherlock rolled over onto his back and, as his eyes adjusted to the sudden light banging in from the transporter, was satisfied to catch Mycroft cringing against the fetor. 

"Water?" Sherlock croaked back. The cell provided a certain automated amount of water every day, and it was perfectly adequate for keeping the average prisoner reasonably well-hydrated. The average prisoner did not use half of his water ration to rinse his hair, or scream himself raw when the tedium became too much to bear. 

Mycroft rolled his eyes, but there was something genuinely tight about his mouth as he lazily tapped in a security override and scanned his hand. Sherlock, who had spent the fortnight of his confinement more abominably bored than anything else, began to feel the first niggling tendrils of genuine unease. As he turned to watch a spout in the consol fill a canteen with water, he tried to school the uncertainty out of his expression. 

"Not letting me on your ship until I've had a change of clothes?" Sherlock rasped, as snidely as he could on a raw throat. "You always were more concerned with the smell of your rooms than your reputation." 

"You're not going anywhere on my ship," Mycroft amended smoothly. 

Sherlock glared over the rim of the canteen and took a drink so large it made his stomach slosh uncomfortably, just to stretch the awkward silence and watch the minute twitching of Mycroft's empty hands. "Going to leave me here longer, then? Petty. You know as well as I do that this idiotic gesture isn't teaching me anything." 

"I'm afraid a matter of this magnitude is quite out of my hands," Mycroft replied lightly, and gestured for one of the soldiers flanking him to hand him something still in the ship. Sherlock forgot himself long enough to genuinely boggle at the pack Mycroft dropped to the floor in front of him. "Sherlock Holmes, you have been found guilty by your peers of high treason, and are sentenced to exile." His mouth twisted briefly into something unreadable. "Even I can't make news like that disappear." 

"Like hell you can't," Sherlock snarled. "What is this really?" 

"I think you'll find the situation on the ground is quite different from what you may have been led to believe by the major news outlets," Mycroft continued, as if he had never been interrupted. "These supplies should help keep you alive long enough to safely establish yourself. After that, what you do to make your livelihood is your own concern." 

Sherlock suppressed the urge to throw his canteen into Mycroft's smug fat face, but only because he'd probably be shot for his efforts. "It always has been," he snapped instead. 

"Indeed." Something about the slant of Mycroft's eyebrows wasn't quite right. What was he trying to say? Doubtless this was all being recorded and for the first time since childhood Sherlock fleetingly wished he could have been left alone with his brother, and not only to punch him in his conniving mouth. "And there's the rub of it, I think. Well. You'll be dropping out of orbit within the hour, once your sentence is officially processed. You ought to make the best of your time meanwhile because I can't imagine you'll have much time to stop and think down there. I've already programmed in the coordinates for your landing." 

"How considerate," Sherlock croaked, and twitched forward just enough that the guns surrounding Mycroft twitched back at him. "Get out. I'd say it was a pleasure seeing you one last time, but, well." 

"‘Hail, horrors,’” Mycroft intoned, his eyebrows wiggling out heavy quotations. “It was a shame you never let them see your potential. Things might have been different. Farewell, Sherlock." 

As the soldiers filed out of the capsule, Mycroft reached behind him and placed a second bag on top of the first, his head bent too far forward for Sherlock to catch his expression. 

When the door slid shut again, Sherlock found that whatever Mycroft had done also turned on a faint corona of lights along the top of the cell. He could see well enough to crawl over to the bags, skidding in the wake of the transport's departure, and pull his violin case up into his arms like a lost child.  



	2. A mind not to be changed by place or time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fall happens first.

>   
>  “...Farewell, happy fields,  
>  Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,  
>  Infernal World! and thou, profoundest Hell,  
>  Receive thy new possessor–one who brings  
>  A mind not to be changed by place or time.  
>  The mind is its own place, and in itself  
>  Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.  
>  What matter where, if I be still the same,  
>  And what I should be, all but less than he  
>  Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least  
>  We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built  
>  Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:  
>  Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,  
>  To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:  
>  Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."  
> 

John Milton, _Paradise Lost_

**2\. A mind not to be changed by place or time**

Sherlock rarely had any reason to truly regret the things he’d deleted. With Mycroft bloody Holmes for a brother, it had seemed particularly unnecessary, even as unpopular as Sherlock was, to learn the landing procedures for these drops. Not, in hindsight, very wise. 

One thing he did know well was broken bones, and he was fairly sure, even without moving around very much, that several ribs were cracked at minimum. Whether he was badly concussed or the lights had simply gone out on impact remained to be seen. He felt around experimentally for the harness, found his arm at least worked, and set to work unlatching himself, and then his bags, from the wall. If his hands shook while he did it, well, that was just what happened when a body was flooded with too much adrenaline all at once. 

The door was at a 40 degree angle (one of the glider wings broken?) and Sherlock skid as he scrambled over to it. The control panel opened easily now, whether by design or a recent hardware failure, but luckily the screen behind it had only hairline cracks. Once he’d hacked into it, he could make contact with--

The blinking red light at the top of the panel. Not something the engineers of this godforsaken pod had ever envisioned. 

Sherlock slammed his hand down on the door release button and waited several tense seconds as the seal negotiated with gravity and the effects of the landing. The seal finally gave with a querulous metal whine, which Sherlock absolutely did not echo, and when it was still only a couple of hand-breadths wide began to push himself through. The larger bag caught in the gap, and when the door finally slid open enough to admit it Sherlock fell forward hard into the rocky detritus of the landing site. He barely had time to register the pain in his forearms or the jolt to his ribs before he was up and running. 

It was dim and purplish outside the pod--what did they call that? The planet’s moods were yet another thing he’d never counted on needing to know. Either the sun had just come up or just gone down, but even with the best night vision money could buy it was difficult to navigate the strange terrain in it. He made it about half a kilometre before his ribs scraped treacherously against each other, nearly bringing him to his knees. Sherlock careened around a rocky outcropping and collapsed against it to wheeze in the strangely-scented air. He’d only just stopped seeing spots, and begun to cautiously get his bearings, when the capsule finally exploded. 

Sherlock braced his head between his knees--ribs shrieking in protest--but nothing from the explosion seemed to reach him and no new injuries manifested themselves. Barring the fierce ringing in his ears, which was a fresh torment of its own, he was unscathed. “Goddamnit, Mycroft,” he wheezed down at his shoes. As far as he knew they didn’t have any sort of transmitting devices hidden in the sole, but hope sprang eternal. “God-fucking-damnit.” 

When he looked up again, the light was a little better, and he could begin to make out the details of his surroundings. Sun-up, then. He was sat in a thicket of dark, stubborn-looking trees he couldn't have even ventured to name. He craned his head to see how far the rocky ledge went, and felt a bit nauseous when he realised it went right up into an insipid bit of cloud. Some kind of valley, then, and some mountain or other into the side of which Mycroft had almost certainly not intended to pilot him.

The explosives would have been redundant. 

He realised abruptly how cold it was. Or was he going into shock? Hopefully not. Sherlock shrugged his violin case off his shoulders and manoeuvred his arms awkwardly out of the rucksack, which, to Mycroft’s limited credit, was packed to bursting. Sherlock instantly resented that a coat--black synthetic thermal, ugly as sin, goddamnit Mycroft--was packed right at the top, giving off a distinctly smug aura. Sherlock struggled into it anyway, thinking mean thoughts about wasted dignity. Beneath that, with an equal air of superiority, a medical kit and some gloves were squeezed in side-by-side. Sherlock considered the scrapes on his hands and performed some rapid mental calculus on the likelihood that the scabs would dry against the fabric versus the good chance he would need the plasters more later. Feeling very put-upon, Sherlock opted for the gloves. 

Beneath that was an exquisitely expensive blue wool scarf. Sherlock meanly entertained the thought that Mycroft had had the last Merino sheep in the universe shorn to have it made. It had probably cost nearly as much as the capsule he’d just taken to Earth, and stood as a final, snide concession to Sherlock’s vanity. He tried very hard to hate it. 

Sherlock leant back up against the rock face and tried not to think of it as resting while he considered his options. There was doubtless some kind of water purifier in the damn pack and water was probably the most logical step, but the double sonic boom would have alerted anyone still in the area to the pod’s entry. The explosion would only make it easier to find, and while he doubted much was left, if scrap metal was as valuable as he reckoned it’d be then scavengers would be here soon. 

His own journey from the pod had not exactly been what he’d call quiet even by his own standards, but Sherlock had no reference for just how quiet a person could be out of doors, especially under the still-shrill ringing of his ears. Sherlock barely had enough time to scramble painfully into a crouch before he was firmly in the line of fire of several quite large guns. Too soon! How were they here already? Had to already be in the precise neighbourhood of the crash site, but of course-- Stupid. Stupid, and god damn it, why hadn’t Mycroft snuck him a gun rather than a bloody scarf? 

The man in the front was hissing “Freeze! Freeze!” repeatedly, like a chant, even though Sherlock was perfectly still, and the man behind him corrected _“Halt!”_ each time, as if they were stuck in some kind of insane mechanical feedback loop. After a minute some of the wildness went out of their eyes and their leader whispered harshly, “Who are you? Did you do that back there? Who sent you?” The man behind him considered his commander sourly, and then painstakingly translated, “Er, _was machst du denn hier?_ ”

Sherlock scanned the group quickly. Landscape he might not know, but people--people were easy to read. Even people of their stock. They weren’t cows, at least--run-of-the-mill humans as far as he could see. The man in the front, his pained, doughy face screwed up in concentration, had the most impressive gun, but he also had on a long-range headset. Three toughs arrayed around him with guns out, but at this angle he could see the outlines of mostly-empty rucksacks on their backs. The would-be translator was heavily burdened with a survey kit and looked unarmed, and a woman next to him was holding a GPS device clumsily in her non-dominant hand. Not scavengers. A militia. People who knew where they were going and what they would find there well in advance and didn’t plan to stay long. 

“I’m like you,” he risked, deliberately flicking his eyes over to the woman with the GPS. “I was given coordinates and a time.” 

Surprise flickered over the lead gunman’s face, and he relaxed fractionally before training the gun on Sherlock more emphatically. Bingo. “Yeah? Did you set that off, then?” 

Sherlock stared up at his eyes and tried to place the emotion lurking there under the suspicion and anger. Disappointment. “No,” he answered honestly, “I didn’t know it was rigged.” His eyes flicked back over their gear. If they had a medical kit, it was rudimentary. No contingencies for a badly wounded man. Packs. Empty packs. Big empty packs on strong men. He took a dragging breath and watched the man’s face carefully to gauge his reaction. “I assume your source also told you that in addition to its occupant the pod contained...something...you could use. A weapon.” The man’s eyebrows twitched minutely. Good. “I’m a chemist. The same source sent me here to help you use it.” 

“If that’s true,” the woman with the GPS cut in, in a hard, nasal voice, “then why weren’t we told this was a rendezvous? If you’re a chemist, you probably blew that lot up.”

Sherlock fought to keep the derision out of his voice. “If I blew it up, why would I time it to go off while I was still in range? We weren’t told it was a rendezvous because by that point the transmission was potentially compromised.” A sudden flash of inspiration seared across his mind and he tried not to look to gleeful. “And our source anticipated being able to introduce us personally.”

“Sorry now, what?” The man in front put in, looking genuinely at sea. “How do you figure that?”

“Didn’t it occur to you to wonder who was in there? With the weapon? Who was smuggling it down for you?” Sherlock continued, in a fair imitation of patience. “No? Drops like that happen only in cases of treason. Obviously it was our mutual source.” In the silence that followed, Sherlock risked standing up, smiling grimly into their looks of surprise. If this was how things were going to be, then he hoped Mycroft had rigged that pod with a bloody good explosive. Sherlock could only pray he’d done as good a job as he always did wiping his filthy tracks. 

“We never knew the source’s name.” The man’s gun had wilted to point down at the ground. 

“Well you’d have heard it in the news wires soon enough.” Sherlock inclined his chin to the thread of smoke still making its way through the trees, and pronounced, truthfully, “You just witnessed the fall of Sherlock Holmes.”


	3. The Low Road

Unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. John Milton, Areopagitica

**3\. The Low Road**

“Come off it,” the woman with the GPS crowed. “As if the Sevs’d execute _Sherlock Holmes_. Lestrade, sir, you can’t believe this.”

“They might not have killed him. But someone did. Or maybe the impact set the weapon off, or there was a nick in its armouring and it caught fire on entry. Standing here speculating about it won't make a difference.” Sherlock reached down to grab his pack and violin case under the still-wary eyes of the small militia. “We should get going. The Sevs won’t risk checking personally, but they’ll probably send over a team of cows, and as soon as the sun is up they’ll begin high-resolution satellite surveillance. I assume you don’t want your transport turning up in those. Where are you parked—Lestrade did she say?” 

“Hang on,” the man called Lestrade put in, but he was already hefting his gun into a carrying position. “Nobody said you were coming with us. You could still be a spy for all we know.” 

Sherlock sputtered impatiently. “Oh for the love of--who normally handles your communications? How’d you know to go here? Our passwords should--oh!” Sherlock advanced excitedly on Lestrade, but paused when the toughs’ guns came up again. “You’re just the muscle. You left the brains behind. No, wait.” Sherlock impatiently waved off the guns and the offended look on the strangers’ faces and squinted hard at the long-range headset. “Sorry, long day. Not thinking like I should be.” 

His mind flashed back to Mycroft in the pod. _Hail, horrors._ If Mycroft got to Sherlock’s computers first? Before Sherlock’s arrest? Wishful thinking? He’d only have had a couple chances to make contact before the codes were compromised, but— “Your base isn’t anywhere near here. You haven’t adjusted at all and your German is appalling. You’re not urban rebels, you’d stand out in those fatigues, so, somewhere rural in Britain. All the cows and their masters are working what’s left of the mines and the fields, obvious targets for civil disobedience, but you’ve got on well-worn mountaineering boots, so not those. Why a rebel base in the mountains, who are you going to fight there? It’s a hide-out, not a staging point. Not offence, defense. You’re just there to make sure the talent stays alive: Milton. Give me that headset.” 

The man’s hand drifted uncomfortably, protectively up to touch the headset. “It doesn’t—” 

“No, of course not. Can’t afford to have the signal traced back while you’re away from the nest.” Sherlock made a guttural sound of disgust. “Come on then. Handcuff me or whatever will make you feel safe. We do need to get going.”

Lestrade motioned, dazedly, for one of the toughs to do just that, even as the man with the survey kit exclaimed, “Take him with us! Are you mad!” 

“Probably,” Lestrade sighed, at the same time as Sherlock retorted, “At least _he’s_ not completely stupid. If I am what I say I am then I’m a valuable asset and your only link to whatever and whoever was in that pod. If I’m not you can just kill me when I fail to produce the proper passwords to Milton. You can check me for tracking devices and weapons on the way there, now move.” 

“He could have a subcutaneous tracker, sir,” the woman warned tightly. “We should scan him before we take off.”

“No, he’s right, God help us.” Lestrade sighed and started off the way they came. “If the scan comes up positive, we’ll just shove him out the hatch. See how they like fishing him out of the Aare.” 

“Glad _someone_ here is thinking,” Sherlock declared approvingly, and started after Lestrade, nearly pulling the man adjusting his handcuffs along with. 

###########

They hiked to the rebels’ transport in a watchful, tense silence. Once the handcuffs were on, Sherlock realised how difficult they made it to balance the pack and violin and keep his footing on the unfamiliar terrain. The militiamen made little noise over the small rocks and wintery detritus, but Sherlock felt more graceless and blundering than he had since childhood. Simply walking required most of his concentration, and the burning pain in his ribs scraped at his attention. First time on a new world, he thought bitterly, and he spent it staring at his own feet. 

They made it to the transport blessedly without incident. It was built like a giant, metallic insect and had a suspicious patina of rust along the edges, but it was surprisingly quiet and steady in the air. For all his other faults, Lestrade was a more than passable pilot. The rest of them sat in tight rows in the back, and the sour-faced woman’s attempts to scan him for trackers resulted in a long, awkward negotiation between their respective elbows and knees. Sherlock endured the indignity without comment, staring fixedly out the tiny windows at the land, and then the sea, passing below them, working rapidly through the events that had led to his present situation, weighing facts and probabilities. He couldn’t have said how long they were in the air, but by the time they began descent there were already long shadows stretching across the ground. 

The rebels’ ‘base’ was an ancient, stooping corrugated iron warehouse squatting precariously close to the sea, a century-old relic of the fishing industry. Some five hundred yards away a clutch of even older, whitewashed fishing cabins huddled together against the seawind, tucked onto the side a hill shaped like a Christmas pudding. The hill and those that surrounded it were stubbled over with an otherworldly copper growth so bright and harsh it was nearly Martian, almost familiar. It did not look like a military base. It looked like the graveyard of a lost age, like old bones surfaced in a flood. 

To either side, the hills followed a jagged, wandering path into the sea, and a few miles out a line of long, mountainous islands buffered the mainland from the ocean. Smaller, rocky islands bulged out of the water in between, like giant creatures swimming home. Or warnings to the unwise sailor. The dark stain of peat bogs stretched beyond the far side of the hills in valleys pockmarked with water. So: no easy approach by sea or by foot, and if they had any sense they’d bombed gaps into what was left of the one-lane road that once rambled along the edges of the hills. Sherlock reckoned it was probably as defensible a spot as any pack of mere mortals was likely to find. It was no good against the Seven, of course, but it was good enough to keep out cows or scavengers or plague-bearers. 

Earth’s geography: another thing he shouldn’t have deleted. 

They landed in a field next to the warehouse and wheeled in manually through the slouching double doors. When they came back out again, this time on foot, small a cluster of people was gathered out in front. A compact, serious-faced man stood at the fore, batting at the high yellow grass with his cane while he waited. He looked up as soon as they were out the doors and smiled, but just as quickly surveyed the group and settled into something grim and canny. 

“Alright, John?” Lestrade called over the wind. 

“We’re all fine here. How’d it go?”

“Not so much as a Swiss army knife,” Lestrade quipped, earning exasperated looks from his inferiors. “Whole thing blew up on impact.” 

“Who’s this?” John’s eyes moved efficiently from Sherlock’s face to his handcuffs and back again. Sherlock felt a strange shock of recognition and absurd relief, so palpable he nearly gave into his exhaustion there in the field. He put what little energy remained to him into stayed steady and impassive. _Milton._

“Found him in the Reichenbachtal, near the drop sight. Claims he was given the same coordinates and told to meet us there.” 

John raised his eyebrows into an inscrutable expression, and repeated, “Alright, but who is he?”

“Oh. Er,” Lestrade’s eyes flicked over at Sherlock. “We didn’t actually ask. Huh. You have a name, do you?” 

“Ah, Sigerson. Hjalmar Sigerson.” Part of the never-ending flight had been spent dredging through the names of people he had only read about—for surnames that none of the Seven had—and finding something that sounded enough like his own, admittedly esoteric name that he would respond to it, but not so like it as to raise suspicious— and difficult enough that they would ultimately avoid saying it whenever possible. 

“ _Hjalmar?_ ” John repeated, a faint smile twitching at the side of his mouth. “Bloody hell.” John turned his attention back to Lestrade, serious and tense again. “Greg, they’re saying on the newscast that Milton was executed for treason.” 

Lestrade cast his eyes nervously at the sky, as if a ship might suddenly appear over their heads, summoned by the news. “Think they’re pre-empting themselves? Do we need to make a run for it?”

“That’s the thing. The Sevs don’t seem to know it’s me. They’re reporting that Milton was _Sherlock Holmes._ ”

“Ah. Well.” Lestrade’s gaze flicked over at Sherlock. “They must have got their scans done, then. John, that botched drop didn’t just have an explosive in it. It had Sherlock Holmes. Or at least, that’s what this one told us.” He jerked his chin to indicate Sherlock. “Claims he’s been talking to your informant too.” 

Sherlock gathered his small dignities about him. It was difficult to do in the ugly coat. “If you’ll allow me to verify that I’m not a _spy_ , I’ll tell you all what little I know. I can provide the codes you used to communicate with your source.”

“All right.” John nodded shortly. “Greg and Sigerson, you come with me. The rest of you, get some food and keep an eye on the sky.” Several of the soldiers looked like they might protest, but John had already turned on his heel and started up the path. For a man with a cane, he walked briskly, and Sherlock found himself once more staring at his feet as they marched up the hill. 

The house they ducked into was surprisingly neat and sound, if cold. They followed John into smallish room with a blocky wooden table commanding most of the floor. A massive, antique desk covered in a tidy computer array held court under the only window. John made straight for the computers and began tapping through a complicated series of passwords while Lestrade collapsed theatrically into one of the wooden chairs.

Eventually John turned around, poised to say something, but paused minutely and raised his eyebrows when saw Sherlock still standing mutinously on the threshold. 

“Can’t take my packs off with my hands cuffed,” Sherlock explained archly, but John simply nodded and turned back to the computers. 

“Am I to assume you’ve got these codes in your head?” he asked at last. “Or written down somewhere in that pack of yours?”

“I wouldn’t be that careless,” Sherlock snapped without thinking, then paused to collect himself. “I have them memorized. Whenever you’re ready.” 

When he had finished rattling off the long list of random numbers, Lestrade was gaping openly, but John looked merely contemplative. “Amazing,” he said approvingly. “Now tell me something only you or I could know.” 

Sherlock very nearly smiled. “Clever. Hm. About two years ago your informant suddenly went offline. You wouldn’t have heard anything for approximately three months, but on the 16th of November, 2208, he made contact with you—and me—on a badly secured line. To let you—us—know he wasn’t dead, he had been locked up in a rehabilitation centre on Mars. If the Sevs knew it had happened, they would have already traced that wire back to you, and they’d know he wasn’t Milton, you are.” 

“Well,” John declared, smiling ominously back, “I guess we can undo the cuffs. If you are an undercover Sev, you’ll die of plague within the week and I guess we won’t have to worry about you then.” 

While Lestrade uncuffed Sherlock, John disappeared into another room. He came back, limpingly juggling three mugs of something hot, and frowned as he watched Sherlock carefully peel off his pack and violin case. “What did your men do to him?” he asked sharply, and Sherlock felt alarm ping through Lestrade. He looked strangely menacing for a cripple armed only with tea. 

“What’d’you mean?” Lestrade turned quickly round, trying to see what John saw. 

“Did they rough you up?” John asked instead. “What happened to your ribs?” 

Sherlock swam up through something unnervingly like pride to meet the alarm he ought to feel. “Nothing. It happened before we rendezvoused. I fell badly on the mountain on my way there.” He held up his scraped palms as evidence, and the sharp look on John’s face subsided. 

“I believe it,” Lestrade put in with forced cheer. “He walks like an elephant in the wild.” 

“I’m a chemist, not a _woodsman._ ” He executed a controlled collapse into one of the chairs, took the deepest breath his ribs would allow, and began. “Sherlock Holmes was your informant. Several weeks ago someone in the government finally deduced that the privileged information in each case had a common denominator—Holmes. Once he was arrested, they found evidence corroborating a link between the distribution of the _Areopagitica_ pamphlets and his computers. It wouldn’t have occurred to any of them that Holmes could have been passing the information on to a lesser creature. To their minds, only another Seven could pull off a leak like that. Arrogant.” 

“How’d he get those coordinates to us from orbit?”

Sherlock once again had to arrest the approving look that tried to wander across his face. “Either he had an accomplice, or, more likely, he hacked the pod’s computer.” Small chance, but as long as they’d never seen one they’d never know better. 

John squinted out the window as he absorbed this. “That’s not all. The newscasts claim that in his capacity as detective Sherlock Holmes orchestrated or falsified crimes over the past several years in order to gain access to people’s secrets. That he and by extension the Milton persona was a fraud. That most of what was propagated in the Areopagitica is lies.” 

“Good way to defuse some of the outrage that those pamphlets have provoked. To redirect it,” Sherlock spat out, eventually. 

“I just can’t believe that all this time it was Sherlock bloody Holmes.” John stared incredulously at his computer, as if it might have answers for him. “Doesn’t get much higher up in the great oligarchy in the sky than that.”

“You think we should release a statement? Let the world know those clods killed the wrong bloke?” Lestrade looked rather pleased with the prospect. 

“I shouldn’t think so,” Sherlock interrupted. “Let them believe they won. You’re safe for now, and whatever you do next, you’ll have them on the defensive. Make it a grander gesture than simply a correction. Take your time to plan it.” 

Sherlock had plans of his own.

########### 

A properly introduced Dr John Watson showed Sherlock to a tiny, frigid room in the back of his house and made a valiant attempt to convince Sherlock to let him look over the cracked ribs. When Sherlock proved unforthcoming, John politely but firmly ordered Sherlock to keep to his room while the rest of them deliberated. 

If it was attempt to keep Sherlock from hearing their discussion, it wasn’t a very good one, because the house was small and rebels were loud. The woman from earlier—whose name, which Lestrade took to sputtering loudly at random intervals throughout her invectives, appeared to be Sally—was particularly convinced that Sherlock was the advance guard in a trap set to kill them all. The man previously in possession of the survey kit seemed most concerned that they’d all been taken for fools, and interjected every so often to remind them he’d always been suspicious about the moral character of their too-magnanimous informant. Sherlock sat on the cold, narrow bed and listened to them take a long, shrill hour come to exactly the same conclusion he had. 

Then, to his own considerable surprise, he fell asleep. 

He didn’t sleep for long—he never could—but he woke up in complete darkness anyway, hungry and sore. When he passed a hand-wound clock in the small sitting room it read only half-six. Neither his host nor his motley crew were still in the house. 

He found John sitting a little ways from the front door, his back to one of the large rocks shouldering their way out of the side of the hill. Sherlock could see the moment when John sensed his approach in the sudden tension of his spine, but he didn’t look back even though he was staring out, as far as Sherlock could tell, into nothing of interest. He could barely make out the lines of the hills in the darkness, or tell where the rocks ended and the water began. He imagined he could feel as much as see the low, heavy clouds blocking off the moon. It was the biggest single space Sherlock had ever stood in and the most claustrophobic. All the data a world could offer—and none at all. Sherlock couldn’t have said if he felt exhilarated or disappointed or, for the first time in memory, simply tired.

“Here to commiserate about how we were both fooled by the great Sherlock Holmes?” John Watson’s shoulders were a harsh black line against the rock. 

“No.” Something in Sherlock’s stomach fell and went cold. 

“Good,” John snapped, and turned bright, angry eyes on him. “Because I for one wasn’t.” 

Sherlock felt unreasonably stung and bitter. “No? Knew all along, did you? That’s why you published all those things? Clever of you.”

“Yes. Yes I did.” Abruptly, John jumped to his feet, much better than anyone with a limp could have, every edge of his body severe and livid in the darkness. “Why should we start believing bloody newscasts now? Of all people! Any half-wit can see this is a smear campaign, to make up for—for the damage that’s already been done to them.” 

“Well, obviously,” Sherlock said, trying for condescending and missing badly. 

Luckily John jumped into the silence before it could stretch. “Well, I’m glad you see sense, at least,” he huffed, more subdued.

“I always do,” Sherlock replied imperiously and John, of all things, laughed. 

“You’re a bloody piece of work, you know that? Your attitude isn’t helping that lot back there see reason. Not that they’re being particularly reasonable in the first place.” 

“Your people don’t like that it’s your name getting dragged through the mud. Your work. Their work.”

“I don’t care that they’ve discredited me or my work. I can’t believe—I can’t believe that anyone who reads the things I’ve written would listen to a _government newscast_. If they do, I wasn’t doing a very bloody good job.” 

Sherlock studied the determined lines of the other man’s face, disbelieving. “Doesn’t it bother you that they’re calling you a charlatan by proxy?”

“Of course it bothers me!” John frowned up at him, as if _he_ were the puzzling one. “Not for myself though, not so much. My work is important. But the work comes second to my friends. Christ, a friend died today. I’m not worried about my bloody work.” 

Sherlock scrambled to assemble a skeptical look. “You’re underestimating the importance of what you do. You can find another source.” 

“I know exactly what I do,” John replied firmly, “and he was my friend, not just a source. Sometimes the only one I had up here, when the lads were off. Although I guess I wasn’t the only one of his.” He shrugged ruefully. “Never even knew _you_ existed.” 

“Yes, well, the authorities don’t think he was living a double life as a Norwegian chemist.” 

“No,” John laughed, a bit hysterically. “They don’t.” 

He slumped abruptly back down to the ground, and this time, Sherlock followed. The moon broke out between two clouds, and Sherlock stared up at it, fascinated by the differences distance and an atmosphere made. Below, it left a ghostly contrail on the still water. “I suppose I should be terribly flattered,” John said bitterly after a time, pulling Sherlock out of an attempt to determine the precise direction of the wind. “That anyone fancies what I’ve written good enough for a fucking _Holmes_. Jesus Christ!”

“He was never that,” Sherlock amended dryly, surprisingly a snort out of John. 

After a strangely companionable silence John stood again, this time leveraging himself against the stone and feeling around for his cane once he was up. “Well, come on then. Whisky’s in the house. I reckon we can hold a proper dredgie between us.” 

Sherlock followed John as he picked his careful way through the darkness back to the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if the chapter title got _that song_ stuck in your head like it's now stuck in mine. Lest you be misled by it, though, Watson and co. are camped out much further north--they're somewhere in Wester Ross, near the Summer Isles.


	4. The Bones of the Dead

> In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.  
>  Drive your cart and plow over the bones of the dead.  
>  The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

William Blake, "The Proverbs of Hell"

2\. The Bones of the Dead

Sherlock rubbed absently at his ribs while he took stock of the things strewn across his duvet, where he’d upended the contents of his travel pack nearly an hour before. The electric lantern cast weird, fluorescent shadows on their edges and brought out the sickly grey cast to Sherlock’s skin. When he’d got up to use the toilet the hall clock had read half seven, but the sun had still yet to make an appearance. He’d begun to suspect that life on earth meant a life of tepid lighting. He would need to adjust his observations for endlessly squinting into the darkness. 

For learning to see the things in the multiplying shadows. 

He’d spent the hour poring over every tag and label, looking for some trace of Mycroft’s interference. The things in the pack were mostly unremarkable, obscenely mundane things he might have taken on a weekend away to one of the more rugged outer planetary moon stations. Nothing in it particularly said that it was meant for a trip with no return. Beyond the small bottle of paracetamol in the medical kit, there wasn’t even anything that particularly indicated that the people who packed or who inspected the kit thought he was headed for the largest, deadliest quarantine of human history. He wondered if every drop bag was packed for the fiction that it really was for an exile rather than an execution, that the change of clothes would do anything but tide him over til he caught his death. 

Sherlock might have believed Mycroft entirely capable of exactly that kind of vindictive self-delusion, but Mycroft hadn’t waited with the rest of the Seven for Sherlock to die of plague. He’d brought more than a rucksack and a violin to Sherlock’s containment pod. Clearly Mycroft didn’t believe he could count on the Red Death to do Sherlock in. But the timing was off, and while in his most cynical depths Sherlock might have believed that Mycroft had only given Milton and his rebels the coordinates to kill two birds with one bomb, if he had meant to kill them all he would have used something with less flash and more range, and he would have timed the drop so that Sherlock could never have escaped under cover of smoke and darkness. 

Never mind that whatever his feelings about his errant brother, Mycroft was unlikely to consign a Stradivarius and Merino wool to the flames. 

No, Mycroft was just putting on a show: but why, and for whom? 

A soft knock startled him, and Sherlock quickly began scooping the lot of it back into the pack as John Watson called, “Sigerson? You up?” through the door. No reason for Hjallmar Sigerson to be digging through his kit like this, as if he didn’t known what he’d packed for himself. Sherlock snatched up the only interesting thing of the bunch and bounded up to get the door. 

John blinked up at him, smiling mildly— surprised but not startled. “Uh, hullo. Fancy a bit of breakfast?” Sherlock did not, in fact, fancy a bit of breakfast, and John looked as though he’d been up for hours already, but he nodded anyway and followed John to the room with the table and computer. Lestrade and the woman called Sally were already there, with the unhappy, shifting posture of people who had tried and failed to stage an intervention. “Porridge alright with you, Sigerson?” John asked, aggressively affable, and Sally looked as though she might lob her teacup at his face. “How do you take your tea? I’m afraid we’ve only got honey for sweetener up here, you know how it is.”

“Just tea, thanks. Milk.” 

It wasn’t difficult for someone with a brother like Mycroft Holmes to ignore the pointed glare Sally was sending his way in John’s absence. Sherlock screwed open the bottle he’d grabbed on his way out and tapped a few of the pills into his hand. Small, white. Nothing remarkable. Nothing most children of the Seven didn’t have to take, as their genetic penance for their parents’ and grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ original sin: too much mucking about with eugenics in an attempt to create the perfect brain. Nothing the person inspecting the bag would have given a second thought. 

“What’s that?” John had returned with a mug and an unasked-for apple. His left hand trembled minutely, sending tiny waves of tea up to splash at the rim of the cup. 

Sherlock licked one of the pills and cringed in concert with Sally. Bitter. Familiar. “Migraine medication,” he said, and swallowed it dry. Give it an hour and if the usual side effects manifested, he’d know he was right. He rinsed the bitter taste from his mouth with the tea, which wasn’t much better. 

“I’m sorry, you feel all right? Harry’s whisky can really do a number on the head.” John looked vaguely contrite, his eyes flickering up and down Sherlock with medical precision. He frowned slightly at whatever it was he saw, but even without a mirror Sherlock felt it was safe to assume that the slightly different composition of the air, and the slightly different pull of real gravity, might manifest as the world’s worst hangover. Or the injuries from dropping out of orbit. 

Either way, if John felt sorry he was less likely to be suspicious, so Sherlock obligingly slumped down in his chair and rubbed absent circles into his temple with his free hand. 

“I’m fine.” Sherlock turned the bottle over and read the label again. The prescription had been taken out in the name of one of Mycroft’s infinite army of assistants, which Mycroft had no doubt chalked up to last-minute availability. Use As Directed, and beneath that, rather ominously, No Refills. Prescribing Physician: Dr Samuel Hudson. Sherlock didn’t believe in coincidences, but more importantly neither did Mycroft. 

There were his marching orders, then. It didn’t take a genius of Sherlock’s magnitude to decode the message: do this for me, and you can come home. 

“Okay, then, look.” Across the table, John Watson scrubbed his fingers over his brow. “We need to talk.”

“Couldn’t agree more.” Sherlock tossed back the last of his tea and stood up sharply. “Is that the sun finally coming up? Nice view, I’d imagine. Let’s walk.” 

John’s eyes flickered from the window, to Lestrade and Sally, and finally settled wryly on Sherlock. “The view, huh? Alright then.” 

“Of course we have to do this out in the bloody wind,” Sally whinged, standing up with a great air of self-sacrifice. 

“Did I ask you?” Sherlock looked her carefully up and down. “I said I wanted a nice view.”

Before Sally could sputter out a response to that, John shook his head minutely at Sherlock and simply said, “You needn’t subject yourself to his company, Sally. You have things you need to do, anyway.”

“And let him push you in a loch? I don’t think so.” 

“Why would I murder him on unfamiliar terrain when I could have easily killed him at any point while he was asleep? Use your brain,” Sherlock snapped, earning a gasp from Sally and a dry look from John. 

“I’m perfectly able to take care of myself, Sally, thanks for the concern.” John patted the gun at his hip cheerfully, but there was an uncompromising edge to his voice. 

Sally flicked her eyes unsubtly in Sherlock’s direction. “If you’re sure...” 

“Quite sure, thanks,” John echoed brittlely, as he gathered his cane and made for the back door. Sherlock shot the other two a triumphant smile and swept after him. 

“Does Sally know the limp is psychosomatic?” Sherlock called after him, and John paused on the path until Sherlock drew even. 

“Pushing it,” he advised mildly, and then set off again without another glance to see if Sherlock would follow. 

The path he’d chosen wound its way around the stout hill, and was blessedly free of loose rocks. Presumably, if John didn’t do it himself, then the others did when he wasn’t looking. About halfway up, John stopped and sat down on a long, low boulder. As Sherlock joined him, he reflected that the only thing redeeming the ugly clothes Mycroft had packed for him was he didn’t feel sorry for forever sitting on rocks.

Sherlock was so occupied thinking mean sartorial thoughts that he nearly forgot to look out at the sky until he turned to talk to John and saw him staring patiently out over the water. Unlike the day before, the low-hanging clouds didn’t look oppressive; they were lit from within by an indigo wash Mycroft would have personally murdered someone to duplicate for his pocket squares. The far-off islands were the pink of a chemical fire. Sherlock couldn’t have said how much of the effect was the altitude, or the latitude, or the depleted atmosphere, and he had a sudden, powerful fancy of travelling the world over to compare the variables contributing to a sunrise like this one. 

“So?” he managed at last, striving for imperious and hitting something with more cracks in it. 

“So, we’re going to talk about what was in that capsule. You seem to know more than we do. What would we need with a chemist?” 

“Simple.” Sherlock endeavoured to sound bored, and wasn’t any more successful even to his own ears. “The formula for a drug that would suppress the Red Death virus.”

He granted himself the small prize of turning to see the look of astonishment on John Watson’s face. “You can do that?” 

“It’s not a cure, John. Not even a treatment.” 

John looked only vaguely irritated. “I do know the difference. If we could suppress the virus, though...”

“Carriers would no longer be contagious, yes. You could infiltrate the Seven without causing a pandemic.” 

“It’s more than that.” John looked disapproving, and Sherlock felt strangely ashamed. “We could end the quarantine. People could move to the colonies if they liked. This could change everything.”

Sherlock found he was still staring at the emotions flickering across John’s face, and turned back to look at the ocean, which had faded to a steely blue. An oily sheen of pink still stuck to the clouds. “Precisely. Which is why the Seven haven’t distributed it.” 

“Wait—I thought—this isn’t a—?” Sherlock reeled in rare surprise—John suddenly had him by the collar of his coat, forcing him to look back into his face. “People in the government _know_ about this? And they’ve done nothing? You’re sure about this.”

“They’ve know for some time now.”

“How long? How long have they been sitting on this while—while people _died_ down here? While this—what? Languishes in the bureaucracy of some drug and safety board?” Sherlock watched John’s jaw work and wondered if he’d ever seen someone truly, righteously angry before. 

“I think you have the wrong idea.” Sherlock waited for John to catch his eyes and searched them for comprehension. “The first successful batch was synthesized over thirty years ago.” 

When John only gaped, Sherlock continued slowly, “They can’t afford to disrupt the status quo, John. Surely you must have already realised that the mathematics are against re-integration. A colony on the moon, several on Mars and Ganymede, a few in orbit—there are over half a billion displaced people off-earth and no faster than light travel to relocate them any further. The only way they can maintain such a delicate system is if it isn’t overburdened. As it would be if those billions still on Earth found that the legal and moral impediment to emigration no longer existed.” 

“There won’t be billions much longer if something isn’t done.”

“No. There won’t.” For the first time in his life, reflected back in John Watson’s eyes, this knowledge wasn’t simple mathematics, or even abstract genocide, but horrifying and real.

“And that’s the plan, isn’t it?” John shook his head, suddenly deflated. “Offloading ten billion people was never a viable option, given the resources. But I suppose that didn’t strike everyone as a tragedy, did it?” 

“Thus the Seven Percent Solution,” Sherlock agreed. “Yes.” 

“The foxes and the rabbits,” John said eventually. “They’ve turned the Red Death into population control.”

Sherlock glanced over at John, where he sat staring hard across the empty water. Everything he’d been taught suggested that those who’d been left behind, those who were born without the advances in eugenics, were too stupid to keep up, worse than cows even because their ignorance came packaged as opinion. When he’d met the other rebels he’d immediately resigned himself to a lifetime of endlessly explaining himself, but here was Dr John Watson, Milton himself, defying it all without even realising it. A wonder even the greatest minds in the universe couldn’t conceive of—Sherlock hardly even felt bitter they’d tried to kill him in John’s place. There were worse things to be mistaken for. 

“Yes. They do genuinely fear it, though. Their kind never survives the plague.” 

Something unnamable flickered over John’s face, and to Sherlock’s surprise, he said, “Well, they’d have to, to do this. They’re not monsters.” 

Sherlock didn’t know what to make of that kind of generosity of spirit, and to his horror he began to babble. “Within the century, the Seven will have perfected faster than light travel and can begin surveying new worlds. By the time that’s done, the plague and the planet should have whittled the rest of the human population down to a more manageable number. I imagine they’ll magically come up with the viral suppressant sometime around then.” 

“Unless we release it first,” John amended, with a dangerous calm, and when Sherlock said, “Yes,” he found he hardly minded any more that this was what Mycroft wanted. If Mycroft wanted the rest of the government to collapse under a wave of scandal, then he’d get that, too. But, Sherlock thought giddily, watching John’s steady hands grip his cane, even Mycroft Holmes had underestimated the tide that John Watson would bring with him. 

“So did the formula go with Sherlock Holmes? I suppose it’s too much to hope that there was a backup plan.” 

“There was a backup plan,” Sherlock lied, but he’d never felt more strangely honest. He turned the pill bottle round in his pocket, fingering the label with something like anticipation. “I can get it, if you’ll help me.” 

“All right then.” John shot Sherlock a dangerous smile. “Lead the way.”


	5. The Middle Yard

_middan-geard:_ m. I. the middle dwelling (between heaven and hell), the earth, world :

Icel. mið-garðr. 'The Icel. _Edda_ has preserved the true mythical bearing of the word.-The earth (miðgarð), the abode of men, is seated in the middle of the universe, bordered by mountains and surrounded by the great sea (úthaf); on the other side of this sea is the Út-garð, the abode of giants; the Miðgarð is defended by the Ás-garð (the burgh of the gods), lying in the middle (the heaven being conceived as rising above the earth). Thus the earth and mankind are represented as a stronghold besieged by the powers of evil from without, defended by the gods from above and from within.'-Cl. and Vig. Dict.  
-Bosworth Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary

 

John had not, unfortunately, meant that Sherlock should lead the way _that instant._ When Sherlock revealed that his contact’s last known location was London, John firmly vetoed any immediate involvement on Sherlock’s part.

“Another wave of plague hit London last month,” he explained, and scrubbed his fingers over his brow. “A strong strain. It’s caused a recurrence in survivors as well.”

“So, naturally, rioting, and increased presence of cows and surveillance,” Sherlock mused, and was surprised to earn another droll, faintly disapproving look from John. He added experimentally, “Not to mention the risk of recurrence for your people.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “We’ll need to send our drone in for a recce first.”

Some time after John limped off, Sherlock realised that he had expected a more satisfactory reaction to the human tragedy, rather than the logistical hang-ups. Something to remember.

Even knowing intellectually that lying low for a short while would help convince his enemies that he was truly dead, under normal circumstances Sherlock would not have been able to stay inactive for so long. John seemed inordinately pleased that the delay “gave his ribs a chance to heal up a bit,” which was an absurd reason to put off doing anything, let alone toppling an inter-stellar autocracy. Previous periods of confinement had only ever led to some degree of widespread destruction and (further) personal injury, but this time Sherlock had a new world and a new breed of human to explore—albeit a barren corner of Scotland and a sample size of twelve.

It was enough to keep him amused and on the right side of a high holy conniption for several days.

Luckily, observing Dr John Watson alone had proved as perplexingly diverting as a Mars base filled with the best minds science could sell. Despite John’s bizarre conviction that he’d known Sherlock based on messages alone—messages which, so far as Sherlock could recall, were largely informational—Sherlock found, to equal parts delight and horror, that his estimation of Milton had been off the mark. The basic details he’d deduced over the years were correct: mid-thirties; English; survived the plague in childhood; no eugenic advantages, but clever enough on his own merits to earn a place at one of the few remaining medical colleges; physician but wounded in combat. Once grounded by the injury, he’d taken to the pen instead. Parents weren’t in the picture—Red Death no doubt—so his actions only endangered a sibling. Full marks all around.

And yet he didn’t seem put out that the others had left him to baby-sit Sherlock, whom they seemed to regard as equal parts deadly spy and deadly nuisance, full-time. Which was more than Sherlock could say of anyone else he’d ever known.

John was happy, for instance, to show Sherlock around the compound, even though it gave Sally and Anderson fits and Lestrade was dubious at best. But from the assessing looks John shot him from time to time, Sherlock suspected John was playing a longer game, gauging Sherlock’s reactions to the things he saw and filing them away for a pending conclusion. Sherlock wasn’t sure whether to hope John was going to be clever or dull about it in the end.

Because Sally wasn’t so far off base, even though her conclusion were wrong-headed—Sherlock was spying on them, and while he wasn’t quite sure how far the conspiracy against him went or to what end, yet, he knew the stakes of the game were high. Somebody seeded the incriminating files onto his cloud drives, made sure the right people noticed, and erased the trail back to Milton. He hadn’t done it to himself, and the only other way into the cloud started here, at Milton’s computer, with Milton’s codes.

Someone here had set him up—but who, and why? Trying to protect John—seemed reasonable. Too reasonable? Who did they contact? Had they known whom they were framing?

How far did John’s involvement go?

Sherlock almost hoped that John’s placidly hospitable behaviour was a mask for deeper motivations—because surely nobody as clever as Milton would guilelessly show a stranger around their compound. Because surely someone driven to become a professional conspiracy theorist had trust issues, to say the least. Because it was so much more _interesting_ to deduce whatever John Watson hoped Sherlock would let slip.

He got his first tour on the morning of his second day. The warehouse was not, as Sherlock had first thought, abandoned or even retro-fitted for military use. Sally had finally granted Sherlock old satellite images of London, and most of his attention was given over to locating likely hostels for the cows. Halfway through picking over the breakfast John had forced on him, he was hit by a sudden revelation so strong he nearly flipped over his plate in his excitement. John watched without comment as Sherlock shovelled in a mouthful with far greater enthusiasm and leant forward to squint at the remainder.

“Where did you get this? It couldn’t’ve been frozen.” John forbore comment as Sherlock picked up half a fried tomato for emphasis, even as it dribbled back onto the plate. “It was fresh!”

“ _Was_ fresh?”

“Yes _was_ fresh, why’d you fry it?”

“Because it’s a fry-up?” John suggested mildly.

Sherlock snorted derisively and poked at the beans. “And these weren’t tinned, were they? You made these yourself?”

“Why?” John looked suspiciously amused. “You going to insult my cooking there, too?”

Sherlock dropped the tomato in disgust. “Don’t be smart. Where are you getting fresh produce? Regular supply runs would draw too much attention. Not much would grow here.”

“Insulting my land now, too. Nice,” John said, but he was smiling. “How about this? If you agree not to waste my food, I’ll show you where I got it from, yeah?”

In the end, it was simpler to eat than to budge John, who refused to be moved by the argument that Sherlock hadn’t wanted the food in the first place. He even carried the plates and mugs to the sink to forestall the multiple trips experience had shown it took John and his cane. Sherlock determined that he would have to disabuse John of the notion the cane was even necessary sooner rather than later.

Despite Sherlock’s best efforts to expedite the mystery, John was tiresomely pedantic about their outdoor gear and refused to go anywhere until Sherlock went back to his room and located the ugly coat and loathsome scarf, which he’d chucked under his bed and behind his side table, respectively, in a fit of pique. When he came back John was blessedly buttoned up already, in a scuffed, ancient Barbour. Sherlock was briefly arrested by the sight of John Watson unselfconsciously picking at a loose thread in the cuff, which was just a bit too long. Likely belonged to a grandfather, then. If he knew what it would fetch in the colonies, he probably cared less than he liked the fact that the pockets were built to hold shotgun cartridges. If Mycroft knew of the sartorial rarities available planetside he might be tempted to visit himself, regardless of what the plague might do to his complexion. Then again, he’d probably just sent an assistant.

“Got everything?” John looked up crisply from his cuff, nodded, and heaved back the front door against the sucking force of the wind. Sherlock wordlessly looped on the scarf.

Outside, the clouds were lower than ever and cold, needling spitballs of rain gusted from what felt like all directions simultaneously. Despite or perhaps because of his insistence on weather-appropriate apparel, John gave no indication that he even noticed. Sherlock tried unsuccessfully to flip up the collar of the synthetic coat. When it flopped back down uselessly, he hunkered down into the scarf and put as much energy as he could spare into looking equally unimpressed.

With all the rest, he blinked up at the clouds and absorbed what he could of his first time out in the rain.

John led him round the side of the old warehouse, through a cumbersome steel door that led into a cluttered office space. He tapped the side of one particularly chaotic pile with the side of his cane and huffed out a short, irritated sound, then visibly collected himself and glanced back at Sherlock with a faint smile. “Ready?” he asked rhetorically, and pushed through a door opposite, calling, “Harry? Clara?”

John seemed pleased when he wandered back, an even shorter woman with even shorter hair capering alongside, to find Sherlock still suspended in the doorway, taking in the spectacle with narrowed eyes.

“Nice, right?” John surveyed the hydroponics facility proudly, as if seeing it for the first time. “Part of why this location was so ideal.”

“Wasn’t the weather,” Sherlock replied absently, and caught John’s surprised grin out of the corner of his eye.

The warehouse was lined with long, raised rows of greenery, running riot in the moist air. Nearest to him, two rows of tomato plants flourished next to a row of beans. In the far corner, he could even see some small flowering trees. Fans and pumps purred around the walls, but the room felt bright and clean-smelling—smelled like he’d read Earth smelled. Ironically, of course, there wasn’t any earth in the place—only the water that ran through the tables holding the plants’ roots. Sherlock, who normally wouldn’t have cared if his food were found in a cesspit or farted out the arse of angels, had explored hydroponics facilities on Mars and Europa, once to solve a poisoning and once a very peculiar sex scandal. But he’d never seen a place like this. Hydroponics, he knew, allowed the Seven to eat something other than protein bars for every meal, and still only the elite of the elite had fresh fruit and veg on a weekly basis. Before the Seven though—before the Red Plague there were places like this. Old places with old dreams.

Sherlock pushed forward and crouched under a table, running his hands over the tubing. “This is a pre-colonial system.”

“The facility was founded in the 20th century,” the woman agreed. “Abandoned in the 22nd, then, lucky for us, fully renovated about thirty years ago by some people who thought they could hide from the Red Death up here. They put a lot of work into the place before the plague caught up to them. The glass roof, for example. Clara and I hardly had to do anything to get it running. It’s not advanced, of course, but it’s got good bones.”

“But it’s beneath the Seven’s notice.” Sherlock angled up to inspect the bean pods dangling over his head.

“Except as a piece of history. But the Sevs’ve never cared enough about where they came from,” John amended from above. “And they say hindsight is 20/20.”

“So is foresight, with the right surgeries.”

The woman guffawed and, to his alarm, clapped him on the shoulder. “Glad John’s finally showing you round. I thought you might just be hiding from that Sally, but now I see you...”

“Oh shut up, will you? Sigerson, this is my sister, Harry. Harry, Hjallmar Sigerson.”

Harry’s smile was both identical to her brother’s and somehow unfocussed, excessive. “Some name! Hey Johnny, if you’d like to get back to whatever it is you do all day, I can give Sigerson here a wee tour as I go.”

“If it’s no trouble,” John said, strangely reluctant. “Sigerson?”

“How do you fertilise the water?” Sherlock called back, having crawled three rows away to fondle the aubergine.

“Well—” Harry began, overloud, and John put in, “I’ll just be up at the house, then.” By the time Sherlock had pieced together Harry’s enthusiastic, disjoined paeon on organic fertiliser, John was gone.

################

Well after the sun had set, Sherlock concluded that the hydroponics, while fascinating, were a distraction. When Harry Watson tried for the fifth time to convince him to taste-test the Italian basil, he excused himself and headed up the hill, strangely relieved by the prospect.

He found John sitting at the computer array, staring vacantly into a blank screen. He started when Sherlock cleared his throat, and cast about awkwardly for something to seem to be doing before just as suddenly giving up. “Sorry,” he said, smiling awkwardly. “I just, ah. It’s nothing. What do you need?”

Sherlock took in the defensive set of his shoulders, and performed some rapid calculations on the time it took for messages to be received from the outer colonies. “No matter. Appointment?” Sherlock hazarded casually.

“No.” John grimaced guiltily at the screens and then shrugged helplessly at Sherlock. “Yes. Standing appointment. With, ah, you know.”

Sherlock frowned, and fought the urge to push John aside and start poking at the screens immediately. Had Mycroft been making contact through his old channel? Or someone else? “Have you still been receiving messages?”

“No, no of course not.” John’s face was open, honest, and horribly embarrassed. “Just...habit. It’ll take some getting used to.” He fidgeted for a long moment before adding, “And then I guess I felt superstitious. If he survived somehow, I’d hope he’d know to contact me, you know. For help.”

“Ah.” Sherlock heard himself add, “Would you like some tea?”

Sherlock reckoned it was safe to operate on the principle that John always wanted some tea, and swept off to the kitchen without waiting for an answer. Once there, he realised that, having been raised on auto-consoles, tea-making was a highly theoretical proposition, but determined that with an intellect like his he must be able to manage something so menial even normal humans could do it reliably. The execution of this plan kept him engaged enough that he didn’t have to think about John Watson’s vigil.

By the time he came back, with two cups of something reasonably approximating tea, John had called up several high-definition walk-throughs of London on the array and pulled up a chair for Sherlock.

Sherlock gestured at the screen with a mug. “Do you have those, but for the Underground?”

#############

The next morning was overcast but dry, and Sherlock seized the opportunity to test the extent of John Watson’s limp. While he was convinced it was psychosomatic, he also suspected it wouldn’t take just anything to ground a soldier of John’s conviction.

Sherlock evinced an interest in the view from the top of the hill, and after levelling him one of the sharp, considering looks John agreed. They picked their way up the path in silence, especially after Sherlock discovered that his facility in earth-gravity hillwalking was about on par with his tea-making. The wind gained strength with every step, beating at his ears and tearing the moisture from his eyes. He set in jaw and focussed on breathing the thin air through his nose, John limping along doggedly in his peripheral vision. About halfway up it occurred to him that investing time in the recovery of a man who had quite possibly conspired to have him dropped out of low orbit into an Alp was unwise. In the same instant he concluded it was more interesting than the alterative.

At the top, Sherlock stuck a pose, staring out across the sea at the humpbacked islands while the wind did terrible things to his hair. He supposed until he got off-planet he’d be lucky to have access to basic hygiene; the people he’d met weren’t exactly unwashed but he’d die of plague a thousand times before he’d join the buzz-cut parade. John, meanwhile, seemed content to potter about pushing small rocks with his cane and wait out the silence. Sherlock stubbornly held form; eventually John would try to guess what he’d wanted to talk about up here in the tearing wind, where nobody else could hear them.

The clacking sound of cane-on-stone suddenly stopped somewhere just outside of his peripheral vision. Sherlock gave in and stalked over to John’s side as if that was what he meant to do all along. John was patiently nudging the rock into the side of a waist-high cone of flat stones.

“Technically,” John said, tapping his cane irritably against the side of the cairn, “I should have brought the rock from the bottom.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Sherlock replied solemnly, and John snorted out a laugh. Sherlock paced around the cairn thoughtfully, tracing the cracks between the rocks with the tips of his fingers to work out how something so haphazard and piecemeal had survived the vagarities of the worst wind and gravity had to offer for hundreds of years. It distracted him from the powerful desire to hold forth on the cairns he’d seen on Mars and the moon, on mankind’s childish instinct to go to the furthest reaches of endurance and attest it with ridiculous little piles of rocks.

“For everything I knew about the Seven,” John sighed, breaking his thought, “for everything I wrote, I still never though they meant to kill us off. I suppose that’s naive.”

“Most of ‘them’ don’t. Not as such.”

“Well, we’re still dying down here, as such,” John snapped. He scrubbed his fingers over his face, hard. “Not that—you just can’t just stand by for that kind of thing.”

“You couldn’t. Most could.” Sherlock glanced deliberately at the cane. “Is that how you justified terrorism? That’s killing too.”

For about half a second, John looked like he might whack Sherlock off the side of the cliff—shoulders tight, grip refastened on the cane. Then he mastered himself, and said instead simply, “Well, it’s over with now. My pamphlets haven’t killed anyone.” His jaw worked, and he amended, “Except one.”

That shut Sherlock up for at least a minute, until John added stoutly, “I don’t think they’re all _evil._ But they’re not very nice.”

“No,” Sherlock laughed, surprised. “I suppose not.” He turned and started to pick his way back down the path, and after a beat John jogged awkwardly up. “The architects of the Seven Percent Solution knew a calamity was coming. The earth was nearly tapped out, the War had ruined whole countries. They were just too cowardly to leave it all behind. But they knew they’d get a push sooner or later.”

“Still, billions of people. Seems a bit cold.”

“Well, you’re the expert.” Sherlock waved a hand at the steely sky, and a small, high giggle escaped him.

“Probably shouldn’t be joking about this,” John said, but he was smiling. He paused and cast a critical eye over the view. Lestrade and his men were out shooting at targets on the heath, dashing rather melodramatically about and sheltering behind the smattering of glacial rocks as if the stones might shoot back. As Sherlock watched, Anderson bungled his weapon and nearly took off Lestrade’s head, so perhaps all the dodging wasn’t as unnecessary as it appeared.

“You know what we call the place?”

“Death valley?”

John snorted and gestured expansively, a mischievous smile pulling at the edges of his eyes, to indicate the endless, heather-ochre heath. “Our Scotland yard.”

"It certainly looks more like they're playing at cops and robbers than pratising military manoeuvres."

"Oi. There's only so much you can prepare to fight a galactic alliance of genetically enhanced robo-soldiers in a bloody great bog."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows casually and agreed, "They _are_ pretty bog-standard."

John bumped his shoulder against Sherlock's arm, chortling softly. "You shut up. I've yet to see display prowess at anything but being rude. Besides, you say that kind of thing in front of them and you'll finally give Anderson an excuse to take your head off."

"I'll consider myself forewarned." Sherlock grinned viciously as Anderson executed a melodramatic roll through the mud and came up shooting at a shrubbery. “Yarders, then. Apt. I suppose you know yard referred to ‘the earth’ once. ”

"Was that rhetorical or are you just being an arse?" John smirked up at him. “Wait. You know the etymology of 'yard,' but it takes you a quarter of an hour to make tea?”

Sherlock sniffed, "You can teach me, if it makes you feel _clever,_ " and as John laughed his way back down the hill, he looked almost graceful and he hardly used the cane at all.


End file.
